Fantastic Wednesday

Ok let me back up a tad to our eventful travel.  We were originally supposed to fly from New Orleans to Washington to Frankfurt to Kiev.  Well, when we got to the airport we found out that the previous flight in the same plane they had a medical emergency on and whatever happened to the guy he had lost a significant amount of blood on the plane.  Can you say - only in the Stratton's life???  So they were having issues getting it cleaned up and the medical emergency kits replaced not to mention the ambulance had to come to the airport and remove the guy from the plane.  Ok - so a few hours later ended up changing ALL of our flights after figuring out we would never make it to Kiev at this rate.  So we ended up flying out of New Orleans at 5:30 to Chicago then to Munich and then on over to Kiev.  On the long leg of the flight from Chicao to Munich there was a small child that cried the entire time with the exception of 1 hour out of 8.  So needless to say zero rest.  Yuri and Anna didn't get our message until 2 hours in to their wait at the airport for us that we had to change flights.  So Yuri had to turn around and come back to get us - they were pretty worried.  But it all worked out and I was presented with flowers as soon as he got to us.  That was VERY special to me.  Then he brought us to our apartment and we unpacked a few things and gave to Yuri and would see them both on Wednesday.

Today has certainly been eventful.  Before you all woke up today we were running the roads.  First stop - SDA (State Department of Adoptions) appointment.  In this appointment they tell you what "disability" your child has and what medical issues if any.  In our situation they told us Ivanna had Down syndrome.  REALLY?  :D.  They also told us she had flat feet.  REALLY? LOL  Anyway all was going fine especially since the translator we knew everything there was to know about Princess Ivanna and then some.  THEN they turned the file our direction and showed us baby girl's baby picture that's when the plumbing started to leak.  She's a beautiful little princess now just like she was then.  Our translator, Nadya, will take us tomorrow afternoon to pick up our referral and then we will be off to the orphanage first thing Friday morning for our first meeting with Princess Ivanna - can not wait.  After the initial meeting we will be able to go almost anytime and of course as many times as Anna and Yuri want to go we will go with them when we can.  These two are VERY special people to us.  Without them we would not have our princess for sure and they will continue to play a very important role in all of our lives.

Yuri also picked us up and took us to several places in the city site seeing.  All I can say is WOW!!  The city is beautiful.  We met up with Anna for dinner and again FANTASTIC.  We got to talk about everything from start to finish from present to future of our little girl.  Hard to believe that the great deal of love in their hearts for Ivanna is what allows them the courage to get through this.

After dinner they came up to the apartment where I could show Anna everything that we brought with us for Ivanna and we gave her the scrapbook created for her by Donna Brewer.  She loved it.  I told her she needed to translate the poem and when she did she was going to cry.  They both said they have cried a lot during this process and I can only imagine.

The society here and their thinking of children/adults with DS is just highly mind boggling to us.  They and our facilitator said very rarely will you see a child with DS walking the streets???  WHAT???  We then told them that they have jobs and attend REGULAR school and anything else they want to achieve then they certainly can.  Today was extremely fun and we were able to learn so much about them  More pictures and videos coming soon just wanted to make sure I got this out.

By the time all of you get up on Friday morning we will have seen Princess Ivanna for the very first time.